In modern electronic systems, such as computers, telephone exchanges and others, data has to be transmitted, for example, between integrated circuits (ICs) located on a printed circuit board (PCB) or between different boards. To achieve a high transmission speed while keeping power dissipation low, differential data lines are getting more and more importance. A transmitter sends differential signals to differential data lines. A receiver forwards the differential signal to further circuitry. As it will be explained with more detail below, the receiver has to accommodate common mode (CM) fluctuations of the differential signal at its inputs; to correctly recognize incoming signals despite a voltage drop across the lines; and to forward the signals with a hysteresis which is independent from CM signal components.
As it will be explained in the following, prior art receivers suffers from certain disadvantages. The present invention seeks to provide an improved receiver stage which mitigates or avoids these and other disadvantages and limitations of the prior art.